(Omaha Beach) Eight decades later, on the same beach of “bloody” Omaha, against the “aggressor”: the Allies find themselves on Thursday without Russia in Normandy, but alongside the Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky, to celebrate victory over Nazism as war rages again in Europe.
Presidents Joe Biden (United States), Emmanuel Macron (France), Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are expected, among around twenty heads of state and government.
They will set foot on the most emblematic beach of the Landings, near Bayeux (north-west), where the first American soldiers landed at dawn on June 6, 1944, and where the Allies lost the most men to the deluge of fire German.
Ahead of the ceremony, which begins at 3:30 p.m. (9:30 a.m. Eastern), barges will dock at Omaha Beach for a period re-enactment. A historical evocation of the Landing will follow, in several tables, as well as an overview of Douglas C-47s, nicknamed “Dakota”.
In the morning, national ceremonies will be presided over by King Charles III, President Biden and Justin Trudeau, in the presence of the remaining veterans.
But 80 years after this titanic operation, all eyes will be on Ukraine, the scene since February 2022 of a deadly Russian offensive whose outcome still seems very far away.
As a result of this “war of aggression”, Paris affirmed, Russia, one of the great victorious countries of Nazism, now a pariah on the Western international scene, was formally excluded from the celebrations.
In 2014, President Vladimir Putin was still present, despite the annexation of Crimea three months earlier in the name of seeking peace.
He then met his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko, at the initiative of French President François Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But the famous “Normandy format” dialogue, then set up to try to put an end to the pro-Russian separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, has since fizzled and diplomacy has given way to war.
After the failure of a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the second half of 2023, Russia, which already occupies almost 20% of its neighbor’s territory, continues to advance from the east to the north of the country.
Emmanuel Macron, who intends to make these commemorations a major international event, three days before the European elections, will give a speech at Omaha Beach, followed by a television interview.
This presidential omnipresence, in the home stretch of the campaign, is widely criticized by the opposition.
The Head of State will also receive his Ukrainian counterpart on Friday in Paris, the opportunity to make new announcements of military aid, then President Biden on Saturday for a state visit to the capital.
Joe Biden, who arrived in France on Wednesday, will praise the United States’ alliances and plead for democracy, all opportunities to continue his duel with Donald Trump from a distance.
The United States’ allies fear, in the event of a victory for its Republican predecessor in November, a new isolationist turn by the United States, which could be fatal for Ukraine in the face of Russia.
On Wednesday, on the first day of commemorations, Emmanuel Macron praised the “spirit of sacrifice” of the liberators and paid tribute to the civilian victims of Allied bombings.
“I know our country is strong in its bold, valiant youth, ready for the same spirit of sacrifice as its elders,” he declared, paying tribute to the Breton resistance fighters and the paratroopers of Free France within the SAS, the British special forces, at Plumelec.
On Friday, the French head of state will give a speech in Bayeux, the same place where General de Gaulle spoke shortly after the Landings, on June 14, 1944, then outlined his presidential project for France in June 1946.